Celestial hemisphere:  Northern  ·  Constellation: Ursa Minor (UMi)  ·  Contains:  Solar system body or event
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New Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Image - 26 JAN 2023, gmvtex
New Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Image - 26 JAN 2023
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New Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Image - 26 JAN 2023

Getting plate-solving status, please wait...
New Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Image - 26 JAN 2023, gmvtex
New Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Image - 26 JAN 2023
Powered byPixInsight

New Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Image - 26 JAN 2023

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

This is my second image of the subject comet, displaced in time by a few days.  I'm including it because the shape has morphed and the comet and tail appear to be getting brighter.   I took 92 sixty second images in the early morning hours of Friday, 27 January, 2023.    Taken from my deck which is on the south side of my home, I started imaging as soon as the comet was above my roof and visible to the telescope.  Based on my previous imaging session with the comet, I removed the field flattener and installed a .8X reducer to give me a wider field of view to try to capture the full extent fo the tail.   Interestingly, in this new image the tail had rotated in my field of view from pointing to the northwest of my uncorrected frame to pointing due north.  This due north direction shortened the distance to the edge of the sensor - so I was fortunate indeed to have broadened the field of view with the reducer which helped compensate for the rotation.   As mentioned, the orientation and shape of the comet seem quite different in this image and the image offers an interesting comparison to my previously posted comet image.

The telescope was the same 92mm AP Stowaway (f6.65) refractor used before and mounted on an AP Mach2 mount.  As mentioned the telescope was fitted with a reducer for this session.  Originally guiding with PHD2, I shifted to unguided to prevent stray crowds from disrupting the imaging session when the guide star can become obscured and bring the sequence to a halt.

As before this is a stars aligned capture session.   After running the WBPP script on the data, the calibrated and debayered frames were loaded in the new CometAlignment process in PixInsight.   The stars-only image was extracted from the integrated star-based image resulting from WBPP using StarXterminator and was then applied as the 'operand' image in the CometAlignment process.  Once the new comet based frames were integrated, some CloneStamp operations in PixInsight were performed and then the stars were added back using the Stars only image (same image used as the Operand for generating comet frames).

I recorded two more sessions - on the morning of the 27th and the 28th

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New Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Image - 26 JAN 2023, gmvtex

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